Chapter 71: Five Minutes (Part ½)
The changes in the living room were divided into two points, but the imposing flame on Jack’s body drew in all the attention onto Jack, including Jack’s own attention.
There was no one who paid heed to the unconscious Rui Wen on the sofa. The intense radiating heat in the room made it so that the changes over there could not be observed at all. The heat perfectly concealed it.
Yan Yongbo had just recovered a bit of energy. He forced his body to relax as he sat back down in his seat.
His elbows were propped on the table and his hands remained clasped as they pressed lightly against his nose. Half his face was covered as he tried to refrain from revealing excess emotions to be read: “Jack. Pardon me, but I still doubt your words. You know that I have stayed at the Apocalypse Laboratory for nearly six years. My advisor was Li Wei……”
“Yes. I know. Li Wei is the head scientist of the laboratory. He is the dictator who directs everything there. Perhaps you know of his other identity? It’s completely different from ours……”
“Wait!” Yan Yongbo found this topic to be far too dangerous. Some things that were well known still shouldn’t be spoken out loud. Jack had no misgivings at all right now, but Yan Yongbo would mingle with those at the Apocalypse Laboratory in the future.
“Jack. I know what you mean. Your Format of Fire is excellent scientific proof.”
The Format of Fire of Burners was, in fact, a high degree of coordination between a series of elements including feeling, perception, forms of thought, patterns of behavior, the structure of the body, and so on. Their energy was amassed in an efficient manner under the special format to form both the tinder and ignition of the tinder as a result.
Since the ignition was successful for Jack, this explained how Jack was able to break away from the rigid template of the cerebral nucleus and truly achieve independent awareness.
And so Yan Yongbo understood why Jack had become so irrational. Clearly, the template of his cerebral nucleus had lost its functionality. Jack had begun to have independent awareness and was handling his emotions and thought processes on his own. Since he wasn’t very “mature”, the fluctuations of his emotions and thoughts were much more intense than that of a normal person.
“Congratulations to you Jack. This is a new accomplishment. But there’s a problem. This can’t prove the source of your information, and most importantly it can’t prove the information's completeness.”
Jack spread his hand again: “Completeness? I’m sorry, my information has always been incomplete. If it was truly complete, did you think I would act as a gang leader in the recycling stratum?”
“You said it yourself; you had the complete Dynamo Core technology!”
“I only said that I used a ‘correct application’ of the Dynamo Core. This isn’t the same concept as completeness. Could it be that you expected a miner such as myself to tell you how to produce the Dynamo Core? How to wire it? How to calibrate it? That’s far too hilarious.”
“......”
“As for the source, I can only say that it came from Area 13.”
“Area 13?” Yan Yongbo’s gaze turned serious, “You’re speaking lies. There is no one on our side who can enter in there.”
“I’m certainly not lying. Core staff like yourself who work in the laboratory are all unable to enter. I’m just a chief miner and nothing more.”
The scar that covered Jack’s cheek was illuminated devilish-red by the flames. Even his throat seemed to emit flames as his split his lips and opened his mouth: “But you ought to know that the highly contaminous waste of Area 13 will always go through the abandoned mining site for treatment. In a certain sense, the sewer touches closer to secrets than its neighbor as long as you understand how to process it.”
“Over a hundred people die each year in the waste treatment area?”
“Yea. So I had to swap a stomach, a lung, and all my intestines.”
The waste area was a place with high radiation that could practically ignite the sun. A hundred stomachs, a thousand lungs, weren’t enough to be tormented over.
Yan Yongbo did not say these words. He understood that Jack wasn’t going to explicitly reveal his secret.
Unless he was truly crazy.
The information lacked a trustworthy source; its value was diminished by several grades. But just based on the Format of Fire, Yan Yongbo decided to believe in it by a factor and he began to haggle the price:
“Alright Jack, you’re quite the moving man. I admit that the Dynamo Core technology, or at least its proper application, is enough to entice me. But this still isn’t enough. You should know that I’m already a Burner……”
“It can help you obtain even more Burners. At the same time, it can amend the laughable mistakes of your old man!”
“This isn’t a matter one man alone can help you with. It needs an entire team. Do you understand? I and the team behind me will need to take risks. I need a more convincing reason to help you.”
Jack suddenly stopped speaking. He stared at Yan Yongbo for a long time before laughing eerily: “It looks likes it isn’t a technological team that’s behind you, it’s a political team. In that case, I can provide another piece of information. Information that only a miner of the Deep Blue World would know.”
“Oh yea?”
“Someone has established a secret organization among the ten million Altered Human miners of the Deep Blue World. In other words, it’s an order….. Soul Order! Oh, looking at your expression, it seems that you’ve heard of it?”
Yan Yongbo took a deep breath: “The structure of the organization?"
“There are three to five contacts, including one high-level member. Of course, this information is three years old.”
Yan Yongbo slapped the table on the spot: “Deal!”
Yan Yongbo stopped beating around the bush with Jack since they reached an agreement: “Then let’s talk about the transaction. Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the Deep Blue World? Actually, if you want to take a little bit of risk, we can use some contacts to transfer you out from the Deep Blue World after you go there.”
Jack pointed to his skull: “Things can’t be hidden from people over here. Even if I have left things a bit unfinished on purpose, things haven’t been exposed for now. I will need an accident to happen. Then I will fade away and give you the experimental subject to take away…… Oh right, I’ll need a block of originum. About ten grams of it. A purity of at least 30% should be fine. I’ll need a fixed energy source to finish things completely.
“You sound so relaxed. Fine then. I’ll arrange it immediately.”
Jack smiled, but he actually let out a breath of relief in secret. From Jack’s perspective, originum was even more important than Yan Yongbo’s cooperation. He didn’t “leave things unfinished on purpose”. Someone in an out-of-body state had destroyed things halfway!
He needed to improvise right now. In a situation without special energy supplying equipment, the special high-energy ore of the Deep Blue World was quite the decent option.
The living room darkened as Jack withdrew his Format of Fire to reduce the wear and tear on his body. The current trick he used still had many limitations, but soon there weren’t any problems.
Yan Yongbo didn’t know what schemes Jack was plotting in his mind so he continued to discuss the details: “A surface vehicle will be more appropriate as a means of transportation; it will be easier to operate in case the situation becomes messier”
Jack spoke smoothly: “As long as it’s quite stable, all the other features don’t matter. Our merchandise needs peace and quiet, otherwise, I can’t guarantee that the effectiveness of the suppression chip. The characteristic of her ability is very troublesome……”
“Peace and quiet? Jack?”
Jack went blank and he suddenly turned around.
Rui Wen’s breathing had clearly become urgent on the sofa and there was even a thin layer of sweat on her body. Of course, there was something even more eye-catching. An undulating layer of dazzling light ripples was right above her chest. It rapidly enveloped her entire body.
An erect figure rose up from the rippling light like a strange building emerging up from the waters. Its features changed from being fuzzy to become clear as it gradually appeared.
This figure was exceptionally eye-catching in the dusky living room, which had just lost the illumination from the Format of Fire. It was so eye-catching that it was directly projected into the pupils of Yan Yongbo within the hologram:
“Archetype Format?”